Graeme Smith holds appointments as a research fellow in the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program at the Australian National University, and with the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney Business School. His research has explored the demand for organic produce in Chinese urban centers, the political economy of service delivery in rural China, the role of rural cadres in China's development, and the persistence of informal land markets. He also studies Chinese outbound direct investment, aid and migration in the Asia-Pacific region, with ongoing projects in Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Tonga, Samoa and Myanmar.

His journal articles appear in The China Journal, Pacific Affairs, Asian Studies Review and the Journal of Peasant Studies. Dr Smith also holds a PhD in environmental chemistry and has written several guidebooks to China. He is the 2011 winner of the Gordon White Prize for The Hollow State: Rural Governance in China published in the China Quarterly, and is the 2013 winner of the best article prize for Chinese Reactions to Anti-Asian Riots in the Pacific, published in the Journal of Pacific History. With the support of UNDP China, he is currently working with several Pacific and Chinese researchers to develop recommendations for trilateral cooperation between China and Australia in the Pacific region.